Time Passes
I know he’s a fellow Berkeley High alum and all, but I could never get into Thornton Wilder. I’ve seen polished professional productions of Our Town and I’ve seen shakier community ones, but never one that I didn’t find mawkish. It’s just not my thing. So I’m maybe not the best audience for Wilder Times, Aurora Theatre Company’s assemblage of four short plays by Wilder, two from 1962 and two from 1931, but because it has a fabulous cast I decided to check it out anyway. I’m pleased to report that I found myself pleasantly surprised by two of the plays, even if the other two left me cold.
Play’s the Thing
The announcement late last year that American Conservatory Theater would be staging Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and Play this season in lieu of the previously scheduled Twelfth Night was great news on several counts: It would feature the return of world-class physical comic Bill Irwin to the ACT stage, it would be another always-welcome opportunity to savor the challenging texts of the modernist pioneer, and after artistic director Carey Perloff’s lackluster productions of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore I hadn’t been looking forward to her staging of Shakespeare’s popular comedy.
Going to Moscow?
The luminous playwright Sarah Ruhl has been a frequent visitor to the Bay Area, and to Berkeley Repertory Theatre in particular, where director Les Waters helmed her breathtaking Eurydice and Glickman Award-winning In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), which went on to become her Broadway debut. Now, just as Actors Ensemble of Berkeley is giving her mammoth Passion Play its belated West Coast premiere across town, Ruhl and Waters are reunited at Berkeley Rep with Ruhl’s new version of Anton Chekhov’s 1901 classic Three Sisters.
Quite Becoming
THEATER REVIEW: BERKELEY
Show #126: Becoming Julia Morgan, The Julia Morgan Project, December 19.
